


#7 - Old

by blue_sun



Series: Twice A Year [7]
Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Coffee Shops, Cute Kids, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Pack Dynamics, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20777888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_sun/pseuds/blue_sun
Summary: Every so often, Jacob and Chrissy meet up to exchange news of each other’s families. The argument about Angela is an old one.





	#7 - Old

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of years post "Snow"

Chrissy and Jake’s argument about Angela was an old one.

As so many times before, they sat in the corner of a small coffee shop, tucked away from regular patrons. A redheaded white woman and a raw-boned First Nations man sitting together probably wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in this era, but they liked to stay under the radar. It kept things simple.

Monsters and mundanes didn’t mix.

Around them, the warm smells of coffee grounds, baking, and floral perfumes mingled with the conversation of other patrons in a pleasant haze just distant enough to not give either of them a migraine. (Calculated that way to keep these meetings succinct.) Polished wood panelling and partially de-fuzzed velveteen upholstery swallowed up the better part of the grey light filtering into the shop. After a hundred years, so much glass still gave Chrissy pause occasionally. It seemed like a waste.

Watching a girl in a bright red anorak tug at her mother’s arm and point to the cakes, the hybrid listened with half an ear to Jake’s lazy rumble and stirred her mocha. Her niece’s soulmate was recounting a recent incident in which Renesmee defyed her father’s command that she _not_ get her ears pierced.

“She’s almost full-grown now. Physically at least. Of course, she had to get three done at once. Think that was Rosalie’s idea; she gets a kick out of pulling Edward’s tail. Anyway, I’ve never heard Nessie scream so loud.”

“Perhaps you’re not doing something right,” Chrissy murmured into her mocha.

Jake’s mouth twitched down. He nudged a potted succulent aside irritably and reached for more sugar. “Why do they need so many damn plants anyway,” he grumbled.

Chrissy kept quiet. He liked it here, despite his complaints. He was the one who suggested it each time. It was pleasantly Middle Ground between their respective stomping grounds: Jake held below the border, Chrissy kept to the Yukon and northern B.C.

Finally he said more than a little disapprovingly, “By the way, that’s my soulmate you’re talking about.”

Chrissy snorted and then chided herself for taking on Mateo’s newest mannerism. “Please. She’s my niece.”

She was privately a little pleased that her niece acted like a snot-nosed brat sometimes. She’d never entirely shaken a lingering sympathetic resentment for the child who took her life-partner’s mate.

Eyeing her suspiciously but without ire, Jake moved on to describing how Edward’s explosion at the piercings startled Seth off the roof where he was re-tiling, and how he’d had to be caught bridal-style by Rosalie.

“She complains, but I think she actually likes him,” he reflected.

“Hard not to like Seth,” said Chrissy, who had met him once or twice in the early – mediated – days of these meet-ups.

Both of them had come alone today. Chrissy never brought anyone (Angela disliking to see her ex-husband, and her sons fostering a youthfully-simplistic dislike of their father that Chrissy couldn’t bring herself to find concerning), but Jake was sometimes accompanied by the Clearwaters. He knew better than to bring his young soulmate, but Chrissy got on well with his wolves.

“Got to say, Edward wasn’t real fond of anyone that day,” said Jake. “Right after we got back—”

Chrissy smiled as Jake described her brother’s temper-tantrum and rearranged her legs amid the folds of her skirt. “That sounds eerily familiar. You should have seen the fuss my daughter put up when I wouldn’t buy her a violin she fell in love with in a shop window in Vienna.”

Jake looked at her strangely for a moment. “I always forget you’ve got a kid out there too,” he said ruefully.

Chrissy tugged at a loose thread of her pullover. “I can understand that. Sometimes I find it difficult to believe myself. Although my ‘child’ isn’t that much younger than you, Master Black,” she added playfully.

Jake rolled his eyes. “Don’t remind me. It’s weird enough sitting here with you knowing you’re the same age as the Implacable Icicle when I have to remind myself every other minute you’re not Nessie.”

“The ‘Implacable Icicle’ is a few years older than I am,” Chrissy pointed out.

“Yeah, sure, sure, I know. So how old would she be now? Madalène?”

“Twenty. She’ll be twenty this spring.”

They exchanged a few more tidbits. Leah, for example, hadn’t come today because she was stepping out with a guy from the Rez. Just the fact that someone was brave enough to ask her made it a momentous occasion, which couldn’t be rescheduled.

Chrissy sensed him skirting the inevitable. So maybe she was a little cruel: her pullover still smelt like Angela from when the human folded the laundry. Caleb’s baby-scent lingered on her skirt where he’d hugged her knees that morning as he asked if she was going to visit Daddy. Rearranging the folds had stirred it up even through the sinus-aching coffee smell. If not for the biting winds, they’d have been be sitting outside.

“So of course,” Jake was saying, “_that_ was a three-day fiesta of insecurity and over-confidence.”

“I’ve always appreciated Leah’s spark,” said Chrissy.

Jake made a sour face. “Yeah, well sometimes I wish she’d be a little _less_ sparky. She came this close to setting off a feud with some of Sam’s youngsters last week.”

“They playing boundary tag again?”

“Yep. Sam says he’s tried to knuckle down on them, but they’re kids. And sometimes I wouldn’t put it past _him_ to do it just to get on my nerves,” he added darkly.

Chrissy elected to remain diplomatically silent and sipped her mocha. Jake’s reports always conveyed the same general feeling between the two packs: peaceable with a slight chance of rain. The four younglings of Sam Uley’s pack – none older than seventeen – couldn’t resist testing the patience of an Alpha who opposed theirs—even when it brought Sam’s (admittedly restrained) wrath down on them.

Eventually, The Inevitable was all that remained.

Jake’s features took on a familiar wary cast, like a dog kicked a few too many times. “Did she say anything today?”

“Jake…” It wasn’t her fight. Chrissy tried for the most part to stay out of it—but at the same time, Angela never wanted to deal with him directly. Heart swollen with a sympathy, Chrissy shook her head.

She loved Angela—but she also knew how it felt to be separated from a part of yourself, to never able to be together for the knowledge that while it would complete you, eventually the gravity of the whole would destroy you both.

“If she’d just come home—”

“Jake.”

The Alpha in him visibly swelled with affront before he unclenched his hands and the anger ebbed out. This was an old argument—the channels so well-travelled by now that they’d worn completely smooth.

“She belongs with me,” he repeated with a trace of his character stubbornness despite the wear and tear of time. “Us. We’re her family. We’re pack. She _is_ pack, on the inside, just like Mateo and Caleb. They don’t belong out there all alone. If I could just talk to her—”

“She doesn’t _want_ to talk to you, Jake,” Chrissy reminded him gently. “Things ended badly for everyone in Calgary. Do you remember that?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“You wanted to talk to her then,” she said. “And then Luke died, Angela ended up pregnant again, and you _went back to Forks._ To your Imprint. Remember her? The girl you left Angela for the first time?”

Jake seemed to be inching towards a snarl. “Luke—” He spat the name. “—was a werewolf. He was a danger to my cub and my—”

“Mate?” Chrissy smiled with bittersweet irony. “But she isn’t your mate anymore.”

“Mateo was in danger—”

“Mateo was in no danger until you came in and started doing your Alpha-dog thing, and set Luke off.”

“He would _always_ have been in danger around a werewolf—they’re unpredictable brutes!”

“Met a few, have you?”

Of course, he hadn’t, and Chrissy knew that. Jake was aware she knew it, too.

He glared at her. “I won’t tolerate dangerous _individuals_ hanging around my kids. No matter how good they are in the sack.”

“I’m dangerous.” In ignoring the last part of Jake’s barb, Chrissy was aware she was echoing an old (old by modern standards) movie she loved. The traditional response was, ‘_No you’re not: you’re beautiful_’.

For a second, he looked both dazed and hungry, and Chrissy belatedly realised she’d let the predator out a little more than intended. As she reeled it back, Jake recovered.

“You, I can’t do anything about,” he managed sullenly. “Besides, the Implacable Icicle pointed out it’s good diplomacy to have some of both families present in all parties.”

She was so busy chewing on that idea that she almost missed his quiet,

“And Ange is part of my family.”

Chrissy’s temper jumped to a simmer. “She _has_ a family.”

Frankly, she was amazed no one around them had started looking over in consternation. But this was why they sat away from the rest and conversed lowly: the occasional odd phrases and facial contortions didn’t attract attention.

When she’d brought her irritation to heel, she said, “We’re her family. The boys and I.”

“Those boys are mine too,” Jake shot back with sudden aggression. A glint of yellow flashed in the depths of his eyes as he bent over the table toward her.

Chrissy frowned. “Public place, Jacob,” she murmured. If her lip crept up a quarter inch, she smoothed it back down without a thought. “As to the boys…”

Should she tell him? It seemed cruel.

He had his temper under control again. “Whether she likes it or not, Mateo and Caleb are legally half mine,” he said tightly. “I didn’t press the issue of custody because they were safer with her than in La Push, but—”

“It’s not a legal issue, Jake. It’s—”

“Complicated? Like hell it is. I want to see my sons. I want my dad to meet his grandkids.”

Chrissy bit her tongue on inquiring why ‘Nessie’ didn’t give Billy a couple, then. For all she knew, her niece’s biology might make her incapable of child-bearing.

“I can take that to Angela. I can’t say she won’t object, but I’ll make your case—”

“ ‘Make my case’? It’s not a damn day in court, Chrissy. They’re my _kids_. She’s my wife. If I want to talk to her, I damn well will.”

“Jacob.” If Chrissy judged herself correctly, _her_ eyes would be damn near flashing now. Her voice was a shade above a hiss. “She _doesn’t_ _want_ to see you. That was the whole point of this. That’s why she’s north of Whitehorse, for Christ’s sake. To get away from you, and the mess supernatural causality got everyone into.”

“Then tell her to come down here. I won’t go up there if she’ll meet me on neutral ground.”

Chrissy’s eyes remained narrowed, but she sensed they were getting closer to the root. “This isn’t about the boys.”

“You keep putting words in my mouth—”

“Jake, be straight. What is this—”

“I want to see my kids.”

“They don’t want to see you.”

There: it was out. Not how she’d intended, but the bomb had been dropped. Now all there was to do was pick up the pieces.

Jake sagged in his chair, shellshocked as if she’d hit him with a real charge. “They don’t…”

Guilt scratched at her edges like starved dogs. “Well, that’s not entirely fair,” she said, softening her tone although there was absolutely nothing she could do to soften the message. “Caleb is too young to understand any of it. Mateo, on the other hand… I’m sorry, Jake. He made up his mind a couple of months ago.”

“…does he know…? Has he seen…?” Jake sounded weak, as if someone had thumped him in the chest with a light-pole.

“He’s read the letters. All of them, oh, it must have been a dozen times. He’s seen the photo album Seth sent. Caleb loves it—but to Mateo… I think, to his mind, you’re a stranger. The way he sees it: you’re the reason everything is how it is.

“Maybe that will change when he grows up—shifts for himself for the first time. But for now… You’re the enemy at the gates, and he’s at the stage where nothing is more important to him than protecting his mother.”

Across the table, Jake sagged with an expression of utter despair. Chrissy felt her heart break for him. She had deliberately distanced herself from her daughter—for Madalène’s own good, she told herself. But if she ever tried to go back… would it be the same for her? Would her daughter reject her, just as Madalène would perceive Chrissy had once rejected _her?_ Deep down, in a corner of a soul she didn’t like to look at too often, Chrissy suspected that was part of the reason she had never tried to re-establish contact.

And now, in front of her, Jake was playing out one of her worst nightmares—except that it was his reality.

She hesitated and then laid her hand over his large, callused one. “I’m so sorry, Jacob.”

When he finally spoke, he sounded like someone had polished his vocal cords with razor wire. “Talk to her about Caleb, would you? If she’s okay with it, I’d like to bring him to Forks for summer.

“Take care of yourself,” he added mechanically as he stood.

He left her sitting there open-mouthed and trying to think of how to say ‘_I’m sorry_’ again without sounding trite.#7


End file.
